The Hartford Courant has published a lengthy piece titled “Preserving Home Movies” this week, featuring interviews with HMD CT’s Molly Wheeler, Bruce Manke of the transfer company Video Imagination, Mike Mashon of the Library of Congress, and the “patriarch” of home movies in Connecticut, Robbins Barstow. The piece is more in-depth than the typical news piece that focuses on home movies around Home Movie Day each year, and examines the significance of home movies and the history and future of the Center for Home Movies itself.
Whether the focus is family or national history, a backyard party or winding highway, home movies are time capsules of American life and must be preserved, advocates say.
“Everyone’s home movie is relevant to everyone else because it just shows how we lived,” Wheeler said.
On a national level, the Center for Home Movies is ramping up efforts to educate people about preserving their 16mm and 8mm scrapbooks. The nonprofit organization also wants to save home movies that have no home and to act as a clearinghouse to direct films to regional libraries and other historic preservation centers.
The article is accompanied by a short video clip of assorted home movies.